Day 72: Wawona to Fish Camp, Yosemite National Park, CA

Our day started by joining the line for the free shuttle to Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias. We quickly tried to put some distance between ourselves and the hoards of tourists getting off the shuttle with us. Our plan was to hike the Mariposa Grove Trail up to Wawona Point. This was a gradual uphill out-and-back, 10 km round trip with 370 m elevation gain. It was a moderately challenging walk but not too hard nor too long; really, it was just right. We saw many, many enormous sequoia trees. It is pretty incredible that trees can grow so huge. Most people only did the first little bit of the trail so we had all the really huge sequoias near the end of the trail completely to ourselves.

See all the sequoias at the top of the mountain? Few people besides us made it up that far.

So many people!

Grizzly Giant.

Tunnel tree.

No people up here!

Clothes Pin Tree.

Us learning about how John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt camped under this tree and dreamed up the idea of the National Parks Service.

Arriving at the viewpoint was satisfying. We climbed a mountain without realizing that we were climbing a mountain! 

We send out a big “thank you” to Ian today who pulled double duty as he project managed the clean up of our flooded basement back in Ottawa while hiking up a mountain in California. Thank goodness the hike we picked had excellent cell service!

Once we got back down the mountain, we headed off to the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad for a ride into a forested canyon on an old steam train. We learned about how this narrow gauge railway was used for logging giant pines for lumber a hundred years ago, until the clear cutting operation on the mountain ceased due to the Great Depression.

At the end of the train ride, we took a class on how to pan for gold in a river or stream. We weren’t expecting much but this lesson turned out to be a hidden gem. We learned how to tell fools gold from real gold, where to find real gold, and how to correctly pan for it. The teacher was hilarious and great with kids. He pans for gold as a hobby and was incredibly knowledgeable. We all loved panning for gold and we got to keep our gold flakes in a vial! So cool.

If that wasn’t enough excitement for the day, after dinner we attended another campfire ranger talk. This time we listened to Ranger Michelle teach us all about dragonflies. It was fascinating and super engaging. We especially liked her demonstration of how dragonfly nymphs can extend their jaws really quickly to snap up prey using Hungry, Hungry Hippos to illustrate. The boys volunteered for the demonstration. Did you know the ancestors of dragonflies lived before the dinosaurs? Also that dragonflies are 97% effective at catching their prey? Amazing!

It was another jam packed day of exercise, learning, adventure and fun.